


A Last Stop for Noah

by clare_dragonfly



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Gen, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/pseuds/clare_dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah is getting worse. He tries something different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Last Stop for Noah

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liviania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviania/gifts).



> I loved your idea of an unlikely happy ending for Noah--I hope this is happy enough! I think they find a good place to be.

Noah was getting worse.

Noah was getting worse, which made no sense. Everything else was getting better. The ley line was stronger. The forest was stronger. The search for Glendower was going really, really well.

And yet Noah kept fading. He was here one moment, gone the next. He was gone for a lot more moments than he was here. And when he was here, he wasn’t really here, not all the time.

His face ached. It had been so long since he’d felt any pain of any kind that it kept unsettling him. He would turn and it would send a twinge of pain through the spot where he’d been struck, and it would send him stumbling back, and sometimes that would be enough to make him disappear.

Gansey noticed it. “Noah? Are you all right? What’s going on?”

Adam noticed it. “I thought I fixed this. What else can I do? I’ll look. I promise.”

Blue definitely noticed it. “You’re smudgier, Noah.” She reached out to touch him, but he flinched away.

Even Ronan noticed it. “You look like shit, man.”

And when he looked at Ronan, the thought came. He reached out toward him. He touched Ronan, and Ronan flinched, but he didn’t move away.

“Ronan,” said Noah. “Have you ever put anything back into a dream?”

Ronan gave him a strange, narrow-eyed look. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“But how can you be sure?” Noah persisted. “Have you ever tried?”

Ronan opened his mouth, then shut it again, frowning. “No. I haven’t.”

Noah reached out to Ronan again. This time Ronan steeled his shoulders and took Noah’s hand.

Then he dropped it. “Why would you want to be in a dream? It’s just… they’re like forgeries, caricatures, creations. Whatever I take out of there. They aren’t real like things that are created in this world are real.”

Noah shrugged. “They work well enough, don’t they? At least, as long as the dreamer is around. Your copy of the Pig works just like the old one.”

Ronan nodded, slowly, but his lips pursed.

“Besides,” added Noah, “I’m not really real either, am I?”

“Of course you are,” objected Ronan, but he didn’t seem to mean it.

“Will you try?” Noah asked.

Ronan hunched his shoulders. “All right. I don’t know if… I mean, if I’m hanging onto you, I might be too self-conscious to sleep.”

Noah felt himself fading, going wavery. “I won’t really be there.”

“I agreed, didn’t I?”

—

So Noah said his hopeful goodbyes and then he took Ronan’s hand while Ronan lay in bed and tried to sleep.

Ronan attempted to get up a few times. Noah just looked at him until he stopped trying and relaxed.

It was very boring, just standing there holding Ronan’s hand. But not as boring as not being here at all. Not as boring as not being anywhere. If he could go into Ronan’s dream, at least he would be somewhere.

And then he was. Suddenly.

It was a bright, beautiful forest—the same one where he’d died. But it didn’t bother him, and it seemed brighter, somehow. Or was it Noah himself who was brighter?

He looked at his hands. He had to uncurl the left one, carefully, because he was still holding Ronan’s. But when he opened his hand, he didn’t disappear. In fact, he looked more solid than ever. He didn’t look like he remembered looking when he was alive—or maybe he just didn’t remember what being alive looked like.

This looked like more than that. It looked like he was made of solid sunlight.

He was ready to laugh and twirl and spin, ready to run and see where he would go, ready to cling on and pray that he wouldn’t disappear when Ronan woke up, but then a girl stepped out of the trees and looked at him.

She was a little bit shorter than he was, and she was dressed in strange, old-fashioned clothing, with a cap on her head. She looked at him with wide liquid eyes. He stopped suddenly, though he hadn’t been doing anything, feeling rather foolish from the way she looked at him.

“Who are you?” she asked softly. He had an odd feeling that it wasn’t English that she was speaking, but he understood her just fine, so he didn’t question it.

“I’m, um, I’m Noah,” he said, awkwardly. Did she have any idea who she was? Was giving his name a helpful answer? “Noah Czerny.”

She frowned and looked him up and down, but she didn’t question him or tell him that wasn’t a good enough answer. “You haven’t been here before.”

He looked around. “No. I guess I haven’t.”

“I didn’t think that could happen.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure.”

“I thought only the Graywaren could come here. But you aren’t him, are you?”

“No.” He swallowed. “I’m definitely not.”

“So how did you get in? Nobody made you.”

“He pulled me in.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way.” But she sounded uncertain.

“I’m not alive,” he said. “Maybe that is helpful. I’ve been dead for years.”

Her eyes widened and she nodded as though that did explain it. “I’m dead, too,” she said, and that somehow explained things to him as well.

“Do you… live here?” There wasn’t a better term for that.

She shrugged. “Sometimes. I suppose so.”

He thought he remembered Ronan saying something about a girl. “Does he… the Greywaren. Does he come here to see you?”

She smirked, and the sudden fierceness of the expression transformed her face, making her look much older—older than him. “He doesn’t come to see me. He doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t even know when he’s coming, most of the time, let alone when I’m here.”

“Are you not always here?”

She shook her head and the smirk fell from her face, making her look sad and younger again. “Not always.”

“Where do you go when you’re not here?” Maybe there was another place, a better place. Maybe he could go there. Could he follow her? Could he move away from Ronan?

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Where do you go when you’re not there?”

“I…” He didn’t have an answer for that. His mouth felt dry.

“Exactly,” she said with a nod.

“So you’re just like me,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “But instead of living in that world, you live in this one. And sometimes you’re not here either.”

“Yes.” She reached out and touched his arm. “But things are different now.”

“Just because I’m here?”

“I think so.” She held her arm out to him. “Touch me.”

Confused, he did. She felt solid. He felt solid, too, which was the odd thing. He remembered kissing Blue; she’d felt solid as rock, hot as a volcano. This girl felt solid like other people had when he was alive. She felt like something he hadn’t felt for seven years.

Suddenly he wanted to kiss her very badly.

“We’re both solid,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ve never been solid before. Not since I’ve been here.”

“How did you get here, if you were alive once?”

She smiled blackly. “I don’t remember. But it was a long time ago. There have been a lot of Greywarens.”

“So if one brought you here, like he brought me here, I might be stuck here like you.” Noah looked around. It wouldn’t be so bad. It would be better than being stuck in the rest of the world, really. At least it was beautiful here. And it felt so strange to be back in this place without being scared and sad… but it wasn’t really the same place, was it?

“I’m not stuck,” she said.

He looked back at her. “Aren’t you? Where else is there to go?”

She shrugged, then started walking. He perforce followed her. They meandered through the woods, following what he thought was a random path. The woods seemed to expand, golden and alive, all around them. He wondered, if he took hold of something and Noah woke up and pulled him back out of the dream, would it come with him? But all there was to take hold of were the trees and the grass.

And the girl.

“Are you ever here when he’s not here?” he asked her.

“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes he comes and goes and I’m not here. But I can always tell when he’s here.” She looked around. “Like he’s here now. But I can’t find him.”

“How can you tell?”

Instead of answering, she took his hand. “He’s about to go.”

Nervously, Noah clutched onto her hand. “I don’t want to go with him,” he whispered.

“You won’t,” said the girl.

And she was right. Noah felt the change when Ronan left, wherever he had been; the world seemed to rock without changing, to fade and brighten at the same time. The girl took in a deep breath and exhaled it sharply and didn’t let go of his hand.

Noah looked around. “He’s really gone. And I’m still here.”

“Let’s keep walking,” said the girl. She didn’t let go of his hand. Noah didn’t let go either.

They kept walking, taking less of a meandering path now, going straight and straight and still straight. Noah kept thinking that a tree was going to appear in their path, but by the time they reached the spot, the tree seemed to be moved to one side or the other or to have gone further on.

“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Noah.

“No,” said the girl.

“Are we going anywhere?” asked Noah.

“We might be,” said the girl.

These were frustrating, incomplete answers, but considering who Noah was and who his friends were, he couldn’t exactly fault her for them. And so they kept walking.

“How long have I been here?” he asked after a while.

She smirked again, not looking at him. “How long do you think you’ve been here?”

“Hours,” he said, and then thought about it. “Maybe days.”

“That could be right,” she agreed. “There isn’t any way to tell time here. I think he, the Greywaren, I think he comes here every time he’s asleep even if I don’t see him, but I don’t know if that’s right. I can’t divide it into days.”

“I don’t think Ronan’s sleep can be divided into days,” said Noah.

They had gotten so absorbed in their conversation that Noah failed to notice the forest disappearing around them. Suddenly he saw that they had entered a realm of grey fog, with nothing but dirt beneath their feet. He stopped and turned around, looking behind them. The woods were right there, still golden and bright.

The girl stopped with him. She looked around too, her eyes widening in surprise. “I haven’t seen this before.”

“Where do you think it goes?” he said.

She peered intently into the fog. “Somewhere else.”

“Is it worth following?”

She turned to him. Her eyes were black and depthless. “Yes.”

“Really?”

She let go of his hand, but it was only to lift both of hers to grip his face firmly. She looked closer to his age than ever before. They both felt even more solid, solid as magic, solid as dreams. “Yes,” she said, and she kissed him.

Her kiss was like the end of the world, like all the promises he’d ever been promised, even the false ones, had suddenly come true.

“All right,” he said, and they took hands again and walked into the beckoning fog together.


End file.
